LONDON.- Atlas Gallery is now showing the first major solo exhibition of photographs in the United Kingdom by world-renowned fashion and portrait photographer Patrick Demarchelier. Demarchelier passed away in March 2022 and Atlas Gallery have been fortunate enough to be able to work with his estate and studio to bring this exhibition to London as a tribute to one of the greatest figures in the world of fashion and portrait photography of the last century. After his passing a small number of signed prints still remained, from which the gallery is lucky to be able to offer a small selection of some of his most iconic images for exhibition and sale.

It is somehow appropriate that Demarchelier’s first job, after receiving a camera as a gift on his 17th birthday, was printing and retouching passport photos in a small town in Northern France. One cannot help thinking that it was here that the seeds were sewn for a career, photographing some of the most famous faces in the world, that was to last nearly 6 decades. In Paris in the late 1960’s, inspired by Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin, he was one of a group of young photographers, “The Paris Mob”, who reacted against the high seriousness of fashion photography of the time in favour of informal, upbeat and spontaneous images. The qualities he looked for were, in his words “expression, emotion, something alive” and it was this approach which brought him inevitably to the attention of Alexander Lieberman, creative director of Vogue, who recognised a warmth in the more casual qua- lity of his photographs, which reflected what he described as “the sense of purpose in a modern woman’s life”. Only a few years later by 1974, Demarchelier was working for American Vogue and the year after he moved to Manhattan, where he continued to live until his passing.

Over the period of his career, the way photography was regarded and understood has changed enormously and few would have predicted 40 or even 30 years ago the extent to which it has become such an enormous part of everyone’s lives across the world with the advent of the smart phone. It is important to remember that Demarchelier’s work mostly predates the age of digital proliferation. His work is based in a world of reality, still- ness and precision. When he began his career, the idea that fashion photography might be worthy of gallery or museum exhibition would have been remote. It was thus not until 1995 that he had his first gallery exhibition, by which time he was regarded not only as a fashion photographer but a distinguished portrait artist. Hearst and Conde Nast, the two preeminent rival publishers of fashion magazine titles around the world, were to battle for his services for more than two decades.

A number of things distinguish Demarchelier’s visual signature from his contemporaries, but chief amongst many is his use of light. Using the minimum of equipment and personally directing its use he achieves a combination of intimacy, drama and a sense of reality rarely seen in other photographers’ works. His natural voice appears often to be black and white, though he is equally comfortable and effective in colour, where his distinctive art of reducing the colour palette produce compositions, in which frequently the structure seems to be the focus of the image and not the colour itself.

Above all, Demarchelier tries to create a sense of the real, of something which is relaxed and unself-conscious in any way, something which might have just evolved and happened without any pre-planning or invention. It was no doubt for this reason that Hollywood stars particularly wanted to be shot by him, not because they thought he would make them look impressive, beautiful or powerful, but because, he would make them look their best and most natural and, as Anna Wintour said “the most themselves”. By the time Le Petit Palais in Paris held their 420 image retrospective in 2008, attracting over 360,000 visitors, Demarchelier was estab- lished as the most published fashion photographer of all time.

The Atlas Gallery exhibition includes many of Demarchelier’s most well known works. Nude, St. Barthelmy, 1989, Christy, New York 1990 and Princess Diana, 1990 are notable examples. The portrait of Diana is considered by many to be the most famous photograph of Diana ever taken by any photographer and the intimacy and connection which Demarchelier established with the then Princess of Wales is clearly evident in her relaxed pose and smile. The prints are all original darkroom prints, exquisitely printed and mounted and all bear the official Patrick Demarchelier stamp and are signed and editioned. The majority of the works on show are from his fashion images taken mostly between the early 1980’s to late 2000’s a period which largely established Demarchelier as one of the great masters of the art of photography in modern times.

Atlas Gallery
Patrick Demarchelier
September 22nd, 2023 - November 18th, 2023